


under a bright orange october moon

by scorpiod



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Gen, Minor Character Death, Monster Girl, Werewolf Transformation, Werewolf Turning, Werewolf typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-27 13:11:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20948888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/pseuds/scorpiod
Summary: Kate didn't come back from the camping trip the same.





	under a bright orange october moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girlsarewolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/gifts).

> So, you didn't request this fandom for _this_ exchange, but you've requested Scott/Kate in Fandom Growth and Relationshipping. This is...not Scott/Kate, though that was the original plan, but the story came out more gen than not, even with the werewolves. I still hope this works for you <3

Afterwards, Kate is in the hospital for three days, in and out of consciousness. 

Scott wasn't allowed to go on the camping trip, not invited, a Kate-and-her-friends sort of thing, a senior trip sort of thing. He supposes he should be grateful for being spared. He wonders, if he had gone, would he be the one mauled by an animal, lying in the hospital bed? Would his sister have carried him to safety? Would she have noticed he was missing? Or would he have died in the woods?

Scott tries not to let himself get consumed by morbid thoughts. 

His dad is beside himself, worried sick. He takes Scott to the hospital, driving faster than anyone should, let alone a pastor, but otherwise, Jacob doesn't really seem to notice him. Doesn't look at him as he leaves the car, just parks and heads straight for the hospital, with Scott trailing off after him like a pup, like a shadow, an afterthought. 

Jacob doesn't look at him as he asks about Kate, so focused and scared about losing a daughter in addition to a wife. 

Scott wonders, with a sort of muted, distant panic clawing at his throat, if Dad would care about him, with his blood daughter gone. If he'd have any care or connection to him, now that Kate was dead and gone. Scott wonders what would become of him. 

It's a selfish thought, with his sister fighting for her life, he knows but he can't really shake how far away he is from both of them. 

Scott sits in the waiting room, the moon shining brightly from outside. He has a tepid cup of shitty coffee in his hand and his father is distracted, his eyes distant, not present. Occasionally burying his face in his hands, hiding his eyes behind his palms.

He hasn't been present since their mom died.

*

Kate is fine, ultimately. All that worry for nothing. Scott lets out a sigh of relief. His father hugs her tight in her hospital bed and Scott wraps his arms gingerly around her shoulders, careful with her injuries. She leans into him, laying her head on his chest, her eyes closed.

“I'm glad you're alive,” he says and he means it. 

She has a bite mark on her leg but when she lifts the hospital blanket up, lifts the bandage up to show him (_it's gross, but you like gross stuff right?_), it looks fine. A clear set of teeth marks like bruises. The remains of blood on the bandage is all she has to show for it. 

“Fibber,” Scott says. “You said you got a whole chunk torn out of you.”

Kate glares him but she doesn't snap at him. Just lays the blanket back down, arms folded across her chest. She ignores Scott, staring out the window. 

When Kate leaves the hospital, she is almost completely healed up. 

Jacob doesn't question this. He's just happy to have her back. 

Scott’s happy too but something isn't right. Not for him. That first night, they all thought Kate was dying (_extensive injuries, internal bleeding, she's passed out, thank god_) , and now she's walking, like it was a minor fracture, and not life and death. Kate shouldn't recover that fast, but really should any of them be questioning a miracle? For once in their fucking lives?

The moon is waning that night, almost all the way full except for a sliver of it missing. It would have been full the night Kate got attacked. Briefly, he wonders if Kate was bitten by a werewolf, laughing to himself. 

_Stupid_, he thinks, chasing the thought away, but it sticks in his craw, in his mouth, like a bad idea, a bad taste that lingers and infects.

*

Things are the same for a while. Status remains quo. Kate ignores him at school and he ignores her back. They have never run in the same circles, and Scott was only a junior. It's her senior year. Kate has better things to do than pay attention to her little brother. She has all these extracurricular committees and volunteer work. A preacher's daughter's work is never done.

Things stay the same. The lacrosse team captain and his buddies beat him up. Like always. Like old times. 

_We're just fucking with you, you know that, right?_ Brad tells him. Scott's split lip says differently.

Kate finds him hovering around his locker, his lip bleeding, Scott gingerly bringing his fingers to it. He wants to stop the bleeding before next class, but all he does is get blood all over his fingers. Scott eyes the injury in the mirror he has in his locker, trying to make the swelling go down.

“What happened to you?” Kate asks. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her nostrils flare.

Scott shrugs. “Same as always,” he says. His fist is clenched in a ball. His throat tight. His eyes burn from unshed tears. 

“You're bleeding--”

“Did you just notice?” Scott snaps, breathing heavy. He slams the locker door shut, and finally glances at Kate closely and--

Kate is dressed in a pretty pink pastel blouse and matching skirt and her eyes are gold. The blue of her eyes have straight up turned yellow in color.

Scott gasps and instinctively, pushes himself back against the locker. 

Kate doesn't make a comment about that, which is somehow even more eerie. She pins him down with her gaze, and Scott is reminded of a cat, hunting mice in grass.

Scott shudders. His insides squirm. He thinks he's afraid, dread pulsing up inside him but he can't make himself move. He doesn't know why the sight of his sister caused a sudden spike of fear, but it's like--

Like he's a prey animal, a zebra being stalked by a lion.

“Kate...your eyes--”

Kate doesn't listen. She presses one index finger on his bottom lip and Scott is so shocked he doesn't say anything, just lets his mouth go slack and hang open. It's a slight touch and her finger comes away wet with spit and blood. _Gross_, he thinks, screwing his mouth shut tightly the second she moves her finger away. 

“Kate--”

His sister brings her finger to her mouth and sucks off the blood. Her eyes fall shut. Like she's savoring it. 

“What the _fuck_,” he finally breathes out. Less of a question and more of an exclamation, calling attention to them.

Kate takes a step back, and her eyes widen in horror, staring at Scott, like _he_ did a fucked up thing and not her, but before Scott can say anything, she turns around and runs off, disappearing into the high school crowd.

*

Scott thinks about that moment a lot. His mind mulls it over and over, thinking about how she didn't really seem to be _there_, present in the moment, her mind distant and elsewhere as she literally sucked his blood off her finger. He thinks about the sharp, feverish spike of fear he had no business feeling at the sight. He wonders if he made it all up, if he just imagined Kate suddenly being weird.

Scott sits across the dinner table from Kate and imagines her mouth coated with blood. 

She stares back at him, mouth closed in a tight line, her jaw clenched so hard he can see a muscle twitch. Her spine was perfectly straight, and she was so clearly angry and tense about something, but what, Scott couldn't tell. Her gaze is steady and hard and unlike anything he's ever seen from her. 

“How was school?” Dad asks. 

Dad isn't really fully present. He has a bourbon at the table, and Kate used to complain about that, his drinking, grabbing the drink away and putting water in front of him instead. When she was around, Dad let Kate take care of him.

Scott couldn't do that. The last time he did, Dad shoved him against the wall, and then cried so hard in his arms, the two extremes going by so fast, he got whiplash. 

Scott lives on thin ice. 

Kate cocks her head to the side. She squirms a little in her seat, moving her spine. Like she's stretching in her chair, but it looks all wrong. 

“Fine,” she says, and stabs her pork chop so hard, the plate makes a screeching noise when it makes contact with the fork. 

Scott's heart pounds in his chest. He swallows at once, hard. Kate does not meet his gaze, or even look at him. She gets up from the dinner table before she even finishes, excusing herself, and running up to her room, her steps hard thumps on the ground.

*

“Do you think what bit you was a werewolf?” Scott asks.

There is really no graceful way to broach the subject. 

“Excuse me?” Kate's voice was icy venom. She had a textbook in her lap, and her laptop open on the bed in front of her. Mid-study, he imagines. Mid school work. Scott didn't care about school as much as he used to, all the talk of dreams and future and school fading away when their mom died. It felt like something that had floated away on the wind, unreachable. 

“You know, when you went camping?” He clarifies. He has her door half open, a foot in her room, one foot out in the hallway. He was reluctant to press further, memories of Kate screaming at him swirling in his head, _you're not allowed in my room, Scott, get out!_ and Dad agreeing, saying he has no business being in her room anyway.

Kate's eyes narrow at him. There's a weight to them that makes the hair raise on the back of his neck, setting off every alarm bell he has. Her nostrils flare out, yet again, like Scott dragged a particularly disgusting smell into her room, like he was some mangy dog from the streets.

“What the hell kind of question is that?”

Scott cringes. Kate's never liked him, he knows--_loves_ him, maybe. Maybe only because she's supposed to--but certainly never liked him. If he's wrong, this would only make their relationship worse, if it was possible to make it worse.

(she could ask Dad to send him back to China)

“It was the full moon the night of the camping trip,” he says, launching into his pre planned explanation, the only way he could say something so crazy out loud. He steps further into her room, a little closer to her bed. Kates frowns as he does, nose scrunching up. “And everyone said you were mangled when you came into the hospital, but you were fine a few days later, people don't recover that fast--” 

“I was _not_ fine,” Kate insists, reaching down to rub her leg, the fleshy calf area where she was bitten. “I still have a scar here.”

“That's what I mean! You should need physical therapy! Extensive hospital stay! Jessica said parts of you were _torn_ off. But you're fine?” 

Suddenly, Kate gasps. She draws a hand to her chest, sucking in a heavy breath. “Oh my god,” she says, dawning realization on her eyes. “Oh my god, Scott, you're right.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah, you really are full of shit.” She throws a pillow at him, which he manages to dodge. “Comic books have rotted your brain.” 

He actually laughs, even if she's insulting him. Kate swearing is rare. “I don't read horror comics,” he says. 

Kate doesn't laugh. “Get out of my room, Scott.” Her voice drops to a whisper. 

So Scott mirrors her, pushing himself closer to her, until he's hovering over her now, able to see that it's a chemistry textbook, and she's googling animal kingdom videos. On YouTube, a video on mute plays: hyenas, tearing apart some random gazelle. One takes a meaty bite out of the struggling creature, kicking futilely. 

“Kate,” Scott braces himself. “You drank my blood. In public. And your eyes turned yellow.”

She _growls_ at him, which feels like confirmation, but before Scott can say anything about that, Kate gets off the bed in a sudden flash of motion. A blur of blue pastel light rushes to him and then Kate is in front of him, shoving him out into the hallway with a single hard push. 

Scott's back hits the hallway wall behind him with an _oomph_ leaving his chest, winded. 

Kate doesn't even seem apologetic. She slams the door shut, and he hears the click of a lock. 

It's gotten a little worse lately. Kate's gotten surlier. Angrier. Angry like Scott is angry, all the time. 

It's probably the most he's ever liked her.

*

Kate sneaks out at night. That's not really like her.

Jacob is passed out drunk, on his bed this time, at least, instead of the living room. He's been doing that a lot more lately, since mom died, since he left the church. This house feels a little less holy than it used to, even with a giant cross and a photo of Jesus, bible quotes, adorning their hallways. 

Scott tries to follow Kate, but he takes too long, trying to be quiet and soft on his feet. By the time he gets down to the front door and glances out into the warm Texas night, Kate is gone. 

She just ran off, at the speed of light.

*

Scott is asleep in the living room when the door cracks open. Moonlight streams in, and Kate lightly steps in, closing the door hard enough to startle Scott awake.

Kate darts upstairs before he can say anything, before he can catch up to her follow her. He tries but nearly slips on the floor. There's a gross smell in the air, sickly sweet. It reminds him of burying mom, the smell that day, sticking in the back of this throat. 

When he turns the lights on, there's blood on the ground. Fresh blood, and forest dirt.

He glances out the window then, but there is no full moon in the air, but rather a half crescent moon. Close to the full moon, but not quite.

Scott goes up stairs and knocks on her door. 

“Go away,” she says. Her voice sounds different. Rougher. Scott already knows what's happening, even if it seems impossible. 

He opens the door. She forgot to lock it, but more importantly, there's fresh, sticky blood on the knob. 

“What the fuck?” He breathes as he pushes himself in the room. He doesn't think about it for a second before switching the light on. 

He finds Kate on the floor, curled up in a ball, and sobbing. 

“Kate!” He exclaims and rushes over to her, hands on her shoulders, kneeling down with her. “Kate, what's wrong?”

She's wearing a blue cardigan that is covered in blood. He can’t see her shirt with the way she's huddled on the ground, making herself as small as she can, but her black dress shoes and her jeans are smeared with it, more brown than red. Blood and dirt everywhere. It smells like a graveyard. 

“Are you okay?”

She looks up at him. Scott nearly recoils, but he holds himself steady, his hand squeezing tight on her shoulder instead, his pulse racing. 

She's covered in blood and it's not until he sees the sharp points of fangs that he realizes it's not her blood. Blood smears on her chin, splattered across her face and hair. Her eyes nearly glowed in the darkness, a bright golden amber. Her hands are--there's no other word for them, they're claws. They've thickened and gotten longer, the points sharp, the base where they meet cuticles and flesh dark in color. 

“Holy shit,” he says, then, because he can't stop himself. “I told you so.”

“I killed Kyle,” she says and then sobs miserably. 

Now Scott feels like a piece of shit. He awkwardly puts his hand on her shoulder, rubbing her back, movements stilted and stuttering; he doesn't know what or how to do this, or if he should even touch her. 

“I'm sorry,” he says, because what the fuck do you say to _I killed my boyfriend._ “I know you didn't mean to.”

Kate lets out a sharp cry and burrows into him, burying her face in his chest, smearing blood all over him as she sobs wetly. It's gross and he should push her off but he doesn't want to make Kate sadder than she already is, wrapping his arms around her. 

Crying is weird when the crying girl has sharp fangs. 

Privately, Scott thinks that's not so terrible, killing Kyle. Kyle was an asshole, the kind of guy who was sweet to Kate’s face and sometimes even sweet to him, but clearly didn't want a transracial adoptee from China ruining his church optics. Kyle was the kind of guy who'd use Bible quotes to seduce you, and probably try to convince girls to do anal to preserve their virginity in the eyes of God and their father. 

He doesn't think Kate and Kyle were at that stage yet and he doesn't want to ask. But no great loss, really. 

Eventually, Kate stops crying, pulling herself away from him, wrapping her arms around herself. “I'm sorry,” she says softly, wiping tears away. 

“It's okay,” Scott says. 

He stands up and stretches his hand towards her, pulling her up. Her sharp talon-like nails dig into his skin but don't draw blood. Scott has a violent intrusive idea of a thought, of her nails digging into his soft skin until they draw blood, muscle and sinew, and shudders. 

“I know what to do,” Scott says. “I watch horror movies.”

Kate doesn't look convinced. 

Scott has an idea. Maybe even a plan, pieces slotting together in his head. 

Scott has several ideas actually, and not all of them are good.

*

“I thought, when you said you had an idea, you meant a cure or something,” Kate complains.

They are standing in a home depot, lost deep in one of the aisles. The bright fluorescent lights above them feel unreal during the day. Kate's clean face, washed of blood, her eyes blue again, feels unreal. 

Scott stares at the selection of chains--heavy duty, meant for bolting down shacks and fences-and racks his mind for horror knowledge. “You could kill the werewolf who bit you,” he offers. “But I don't think that works if you've killed someone already.”

Kate sighs. “Anything else in that head of yours?” she asks. Her affect was flat, toneless. Since Kyle died (since she killed Kyle), Kate has been off. Like killing Kyle had killed a bit of her too, and Kate was less Kate the Teenage Girl anymore, Kate the Preacher's Daughter, and what was left was Kate the Killer. Kate the Werewolf. 

_Kate the Werewolf_ had a cool ring to it, Scott thought, like a lost comic book. 

“Wolfsbane. Aconite,” he rambles out. They'd have to find it. There wasn't a craft store in Bethel. “That might do something.”

“That's a real plant? I thought that was made up.” 

“Yeah,” Scott says. Surreal, to be talking about werewolves and lycanthropy cures, in the middle of a store. No one is paying attention to them, but he didn't think it would matter if they were. “But that could poison you too. You could die.”

Kate processes this fact with a numb, distant look in her eye. She sighs, and leans back against the shelves. She looks at Scott, but not really at him. Through him. 

_Do you wanna eat me_, he wonders, but he can't make himself ask that. 

“Let's just get you through the full moon first,” he says, “without hurting anyone else. And then we can think about cures.”

*

“Are you sure this will hold?” Kate asks.

Scott brought Kate to the cabin in the woods the local lacrosse team liked to frequent, a place he wasn't supposed to know about, as the semi pious son of a local preacher; a place full of teenage debauchery and drugs. He's only been here once before, invited to a lacrosse team party. He thought he was getting accepted, finally, at last, into the group. It didn't go well. He left with bruises and a black eye. 

Scott stares down at the chains. They're heavy, hard for him to drag around. He has a padlock, industrial size, that he plans to use, as soon as he leaves, steps out, and wraps the chain around the door. 

“No,” he answers honestly. 

Kate makes a small noise, folding her arms around herself. She should sit down, but Kate couldn't rest. All day she's been hungry and growling and snarling at him, frantically pacing back and forth. Sweat rolls down her back, down her tank, down her forehead and temple. These last few days, she'd been overheated. 

Scott had never asked what kind of monster had bitten her, if it was a wolf man, Lon Chaney Jr. type, or a large wolf, or something in between--but he can finally fully see, something under her skin, behind her eyes. Pushing and fighting to get out. 

“It'll be fine,” he reassures her, but his heart wasn't in it. “You’ll be fine.”

She shakes her head but her face is stony. 

“I'm gonna tear this whole room apart,” she whispers. 

Scott shrugs. “It's just a room.”

Kate fixes him with a glare, her eyes amber, unnaturally bright. “I want to tear this room apart right now.”

Scott nods. Takes in a breath. “Okay, that's fine.”

She pauses. Steps closer. Sniffs the air. Her stance is off, shoulders hunched. The moon isn't up yet but Scott was feeling strangely claustrophobic suddenly; the cabin was small but not that small, at least separated rooms in the back for people to fool around, and all he wanted to do was get out. 

“Scott,” she says, “I want to tear you apart.”

“Yeah, but,” Scott says, smiling, despite himself. “That's nothing new.”

Kate doesn't laugh. She stares out the window and clenched her fists until blood comes out from her fingernails. 

Eventually the sun sets. When the sky turns to twilight, Scott heads out, grabbing his backpack and the chains. 

“Scott!” 

Scott looks back. The moon wasn't up yet but a near thing. When Kate speaks, she has a mouthful of fangs. 

“Don't go,” she cries.

Scott opens his mouth to protest, but she cuts him off. 

“Get out of here, but...don't leave.”

Scott nods. “I'll be here all night. Just outside.”

He turns back now and locks the door. Grabs the chain and binds them tight. It's a single door, it'd be easier if he was locking down two double doors, but he nailed boards shut to the windows, a three day project, and he stretches out the chain to wrap around the hooks he installed. He thinks it could hold. 

Scott looks at his pad lock and stuffs it back in his backpack. 

He walks out a bit into the woods, letting the trees above him dwarf him. Wondering if another werewolf would attack him tonight. 

When he's far enough away, he makes a phone call.

*

It starts with a scream. Loud, sharp, agonized. He's never heard anyone scream like that. The kind of scream that makes him wanna discard the chains against his better judgement and run inside.

Scott bites down on the inside of his own cheek, bracing himself against the October cold. He doesn't go inside. 

The scream turns into a howl. Ragged at first then stronger. More powerful, echoing throughout the forest even though it was muffled by the cabin. He shudders, and still doesn't go inside. 

Then quiet. No screams. No howls. No nothing. Scott doesn't dare approach the door. He stays by Kate’s car, watching. Waiting. 

“Hey, loser!” 

For the first time in his life, hearing Brad call him that made him smile. A sick kind of excitement fills him, his heart loud in his chest, but not from fear. 

Scott grins to himself, spinning around to face Brad. 

“What's up?” He asks, feigning pleasantries. Then frowns. Brad came alone. “Where's everyone?” He expected at least half the lacrosse team. 

Brad sneers at him. “There's no way you actually have weed on you, I came to call your bluff, dipshit.”

Scott bites his tongue, holding back a retort. Alright then. Let it be just the two of them then. That should be good enough. For now. 

“It's inside,” he says, turning back around. This could go wrong, very easy. It's already gone somewhat wrong. He can't think straight, trying to keep his breathing under control. 

He presses his ear to the door. The wolf--Kate--is quiet. Scott worries she escaped, left somehow and now he can't hear anything. 

“What the fuck, Fuller?” 

“Just a second,” he says, rushing through this. He undoes the chain and--

Scott doesn't get time to step out of the way. He thought he'd have to enter the cabin, lure Brad in but the moment the chain was loose, the wolf burst free, flinging the door open as she jumps out.

Scott gets thrown back by the sheer force of her, and he hits his head on the wooden floor of the porch. For a moment, he can't even move, dizzy, pain bursting behind his eyes. All he hears is screaming and snarls. 

Everything gets very loud. Brad is somewhere between a scream and a sob and the wolf is snarling. He hears the sound of rendering flesh, the crunch and snap of bone. Hears screams get reduced to sick, gurgling noises, muted and dying. 

Dying. Brad was dying. Just like he wanted. 

Scott tries to move, to make his legs work. It occurs to him that he's outside, in the cold, in the forest, with a werewolf, and things are looking really bad for him right now. 

When he lifts his head up, the wolf--_Kate_\--is devouring what's left of Brad, her snout in his belly, tearing out guts and innards. Scott may puke, just smelling it, sickly sweet death and sharp acrid blood and god knows what else in the air. 

The sight of his body, though, made some deep dark part of Scott grin in grim satisfaction. All the pain in his body felt worth it. 

He whimpers, trying to get himself back up, trying not to fall down, but the wolf turns to him then, raising her bloodied snout. 

_What a pretty wolf_ is the dumbest thought he could think. Big, bigger than any wild animal he's ever seen on National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. Her fur was all white, matted with blood but beautiful in a feral way, like a volcano. 

She is coming right for him. 

Scott scrambles to his feet, trying not to fall over. The cabin is boarded up, if he could only get the door closed, he may have to sit the night inside and let Kate maul whoever crosses her path. 

The door was pulled off its hinges. 

Scott doesn't get a chance to react to that before sharp teeth sink into his ankle. He screams, kicks, and is dragged down to the floor. He hits his head _again_ this time, pain throbbing through him, along with the white hot burning of his leg. He manages to get himself turned around, if only to stare at Kate before she rips his throat out, _death by your own shitty revenge scheme--_

She licks his nose. Her tongue is warm, heavy and bloody. It's a little gross and so absurd, he giggles. 

“Kate?” He asks. He didn't think the wolf Kate had turned into would recognize him. 

She makes a low whine of a sound, soft, almost sweet. More dog than wolf. Scott tentatively raises his hand and runs his fingers down her fur. It's the softest fur he's ever felt and so thick and lush, his hand gets lost in it. 

He gasps, and cries, just a little, out of sheer relief.

Kate leans down to lick a stripe down his throat but that's all she does. Licks and nuzzles him, before resting her heavy weight beside him. 

The pain, combined with the relief of not being mauled to death makes Scott pass out.

*

In the morning, Scott wakes up to a throbbing pain in his leg, slumped against the car in the back seat, and Kate bandaging his ankle.

She was also naked--her hair a ragged mess, her pale skin covered in dried blood. They have extra clothes he packed for her in his backpack, but she hasn't bothered to put any on. 

Scott takes a deep breath and tries to look away, awkwardly glancing straight ahead at the broken down cabin, then around at the soft leather interior of the car, anything to avoid looking at his sister. 

He doesn't know how he got here. He doesn't remember waking up. Kate must have carried him. His body feels unnaturally hot and warm, like he has a fever, an infection, building in his veins. 

“The bleeding stopped a while ago,” she says. He could hear the wolf in her voice, the fury in it, the low building growl from her human throat. Her mouth is clenched in a tight line. Her hands were covered in blood. “You should be fine. It's already mostly healed,” she says.

_Still hurts_, Scott thinks, but he doesn't mention it. His mom used to stitch him up like this, whenever he'd come home with bleeding knees and cut up elbows, from playing too hard. Scott's throat tightens at the thought of her, wondering what she'd think of this. 

Kate pats the bandage when she is done, just hard enough for Scott to flinch. 

“Kate,” he says, as she rises up, standing. He shuts his eyes tight before he gets a glance at her full nudity. “Kate, there are clothes in the back pack.”

She doesn't say anything, but he hears rustling, movement, the crunch of leaves, a zipper. After a few minutes, Scott allows himself to open his eyes and get out of the car, sitting down on the hood. Kate was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, drinking down a water bottle he packed. 

Neither of them say anything for a moment. Brad's body lies still in the distance. He did not smell fresh. 

“So I'm a werewolf now too?” Scott asks. 

Kate squeezes the water bottle hard in her hands, until it cracks and breaks. With large, purposeful strides, she walks over until she's in front of him, her hands on the hood besides Scott, trapping him with her. 

Scott takes a deep breath. His pulse is steady and strong, despite his overheated, infected body. 

“Scott,” she asks carefully. “Did you know what would happen?” Her voice is low, raspy. “Did you know Brad would show up?” 

There's no point in lying. 

“Yeah,” he says. He is so calm, confessing to deception, maybe even murder. Scott has never felt this calm before in his life. He wonders if this is what peace is supposed to feel like. “I called him.”

“For the love of god, why?” she asks. 

He rolls his eyes. That is the absolute wrong response, he knows, but he thinks it's obvious. If Kate ever paid attention to him in school, she would know. 

“Because I wanted him dead, Kate,” he says.

She slaps him, hard, her nails catching on his skin, dragging down. She scratches him, hard enough to draw blood. Scott can feel it well up, fresh and aching. Her nails weren't even claws, just her regular teenage girl fingernails. 

“Fuck you,” she snarls, taking one step away from him, like she didn't want to be near him anymore. “Fuck you, how dare you use me like your attack dog--”

“You're not an attack dog,” he protests. “It wasn't about that--”

“I _ate_ him Scott, what do you call that? You sicced me on him and I ate him--”

“You ate your boyfriend, so I don't think you should be throwing stones--”

“I didn't want to eat him!” She screams at him, her voice echoing through the woods. “That was an accident--”

“I don't think that's true,” Scott spits out. There is more bite in his voice that he thought there would be. All these past years of resentment, poisoning him. “You didn't eat me. You totally could have and you just licked me like a puppy dog. You _can_ control yourself. So maybe some part of you wanted to eat Kyle.” 

“I guess we're both monsters then,” Kate says. The anger shakes loose from her voice. It's mostly flat, which scares him more than Kate angry at him. Her lips curl in bland disgust. “But hey, now you don't need me. You can eat whoever you want by yourself.”

Scott doesn't respond. If he does, he would have to say, that he didn't entirely hate that idea, and he isn't sure he knows what to do with that information. 

They don't say anything to each other after that. 

The sun rises a little higher in the sky.

Kate sits in the car, waiting for him. Her legs are up, almost casual, resting on the dashboard. She was staring at the woods, and pointedly not looking at Scott. “I don't want to go back to school,” she says idly. She doesn't look over to him. Her eyes were drawn to the forest. 

“Okay,” Scott says, wandering over to Brad's body. Maggots were starting to eat him. Gross. “We won't.” 

“We?”

Scott shrugs. “It seems kind of pointless.” Why do wolves need high school?

Scott draws his hand to the corpse, and touches the bloody slick ruin of his face. His hand comes away dirty, bloody as well, but bringing it up to his mouth made him gag. Nausea rolls in his belly and his food from the previous day doesn't come out but its a near thing. 

“Jesus,” he cringes, gasping. 

“He's dead,” Kate says, stern, lecturing. “You want something alive.”

Scott wipes his hand on his pants instead, which isn't any better, the smell is going to cling to him all the way home. 

He slides into the passenger seat. Kate's shoulders are stiff, and she doesn’t move to start the car, still staring out into the distance. 

“Does this mean we’re related now?” He asks. It sounds stupid the moment he says it but he keeps going, the idea seizing him and not letting go. It’s a dumb thought, but it makes him light headed to think about. Since he was a kid, all he wanted was to feel like he was a part of the family, for real, not because of a piece of paper said so. “Like. Swapping spit and blood. That makes us actually related. Doesn't it?”

When he says that, it occurs to him, that Kate may still be looking for a cure. 

Scott doesn’t think he wants one. 

Kate doesn't say anything. Kate's never wanted him to be in her family. He remembers her, age eight, stopping her feet, crying and yelling about how she didn't want a weird Chinese brother. She's probably disgusted to be actually related. 

But Kate grabs his hand, taking it into hers. She squeezes tight, their palms pressed together. Scott lets out a sigh, a breath he'd been holding and leans in, resting his head against her shoulder. He is taller than her, but not by much and it's an easy fit, slotting into her. 

“Yeah,” Kate says. “We’re pack now.”


End file.
